Free Proteus in the Underworld by Charles Sheffield Page B

junior. He would never have given her an assignment as difficult as a failure of the humanity test in a remote and unfamiliar location. The Carcon and Fugate colonists were notoriously tough on outsiders. Without help her chances of success were low indeed.
    But she was seeking help— his help, as a family member. Had someone else counted on that? Did someone in the Office of Form Control already realize that she and Bey were related when she was assigned to the case? That was unlikely. The connection lay so many generations in the past. Bey had noticed that her name in the official files was Sondra Dearborn , not Sondra Wolf Dearborn. She had identified herself to Bey as a fellow Wolf only because she was trying to enlist his support.
    But if no one had known of their relationship when the project was assigned to her, it was Bey's guess that this was no longer the case. Sondra was now tagged as a Bey Wolf relative—with whatever that implied.
    What else? He had told her to come and see him without telling anyone else in the Office of Form Control. But certainly someone had learned of her latest visit, because Denzel Morrone had known enough to send a message to Sondra here , on Wolf Island.
    Mystery, or trivial incident? Bey had asked her not to talk about her visit—but he had not told her to keep it secret. A crucial distinction.
    One person who had surely not known that Sondra would arrive on Wolf Island was Trudy Melford. Her surprise had been genuine. But how much else of what she had to say was true? If Bey's instincts were good for anything, Trudy held a whole hand of cards that she was not willing to show—until he did what she wanted, and went to Mars. Perhaps not even then.
    Did she need him all that much? Bey had little false modesty, but he doubted that his skills exceeded the combined talent available within the Biological Equipment Corporation. Trudy surely had her own hidden agenda, of which he must form a part.
    Bey reached for the control panel at the bedside. Not for programmed sleep, not quite yet. He inserted the silver card that Trudy Melford had given him into the transportation module. Here at least she had not been deceiving him. The return showed huge available credit, beyond the number of digits that the machine could display. Bey instructed the module to arrange for a maximum-speed link from Wolf Island to Mars beginning in fourteen hours, with money no object. He asked for feedback only if Trudy balked at the cost.
    At last he closed his eyes. He knew he would sleep now, and without the need for any program.
    Had Sondra Dearborn or Trudy Melford been present in the room he would not have thanked them. But he should have. For if one thing in the world pleased Bey Wolf more than any other, it was the delicious sense of anticipation provided by new and perplexing questions.
    * * *
    Earth's permanent link system composed an exact twenty entry points, located close to the vertices of a regular dodecahedron. It had been conceived by its creator, Gerald Mattin, as an instantaneous and energy-free system of transportation in flat spacetime. Practical details had ruined that dream. Earth was not a perfect sphere, so the vertices were slightly off their ideal locations; spacetime near Earth's surface was slightly curved. Travel through the Mattin Link was still effectively instantaneous, but it came at a price.
    That price, for travel around Earth, was nothing compared with the cost of maintaining a link with one vertex on Earth and the other on Mars. Trudy Melford, with a profligate disregard of expense that still amazed Bey, had been holding a link open for her personal use and convenience for more than three years.
    How could she—or anyone, no matter how rich— possibly afford it?
    Bey had part of his answer when he arrived in Chetumal, at Trudy's North American terminal point. He had linked in to the Yucatan on the east-bound route, traveling via Northern Australia, the Marianas, Johnston Island,